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Saturday, April 7, 2018

Alice's Buffet

If I were Alice, I'd probably have rather interesting tastes in furniture. Definitely things with character and charm.
Quirky and unique.
Maybe some hand painted things that are one-of-a-kind. Like this fun little number the Large Wooden Buffet.

It's from the one and only Alpha Stamps and here is how it started life....

Just a humble little wooden buffet, a blank canvas waiting for someone to come along and paint mushrooms and stuff all over it.
I gave it a coat of gesso and then white paint.

I painted the trim and spindles a pale shade of green, including the drawer fronts and the rolled trim that is on either side of the drawers to keep a consistent line of color.

I took the same green (Chromium Oxide Green, but you can use whatever color makes you happy) straight from the bottle to do the itty bits of detail on the spindles and the center rolled trim on either side of the outside drawers.
I used the sap green paint to lay the dark green ground for the center painting.

Using an old brush I cut straight across, I gradually added a bit of white to lighten up the green as it goes higher, until it blends and nearly disappears into the creamy white background.

I painted in little stems...

and tiny little red flowers that look a little like poppies. I made sure I gave the same treatment to the frame so it would blend in.

Using Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold and a bit of water, I 'aged' up the piece, brushing the paint on and then wiping most of it off with a damp paper towel. Don't wait too long to wipe the paint off, you want to do it while it's still damp.
It gives the piece a mellow, softer appearance.
I found this awesome image on the Alice Plays Croque Collage Sheet (actually, the big boss found it for me, she's good that way) and reduced it down so it would fit into the frame, which originally had a mirror in it, but I wanted a cool picture.
It still needed alittle something, so I painted some more flowers and added a few mushrooms.....

I painted four wooden beads green and added them for feet and a bit of gold paint for some extra detail on the drawers and around the top of the buffet arch.
And here it is. Alice's Buffet. Now I just need to fill it with treasure from the rabbit hole.
EXTRA......
See below the supplies list for a (very) brief and easy tutorial on painting tiny mushrooms and flowers.
Supplies:Large Wooden BuffetAlice Plays Croque Collage Sheet

Additional Supplies:
Acrylic paint
Wooden beads for feet

One way to paint little mushrooms and flowers.
Super easy! And I am sorry for the photographs... everything I snapped was an inch or shorter, so it was a bit of a challenge and my picture taking skills are minimal.
Mock me if you must. Just do it elsewhere.
Mushrooms:
Start with two weird shaped triangles, one on top of the other...

Add a spongy, bigger triangle in red on top of the other two. Cover most of the triangle that will now be the center triangle. Add a little shading to the center triangle and the base triangle opposite the side you imagine the light is coming from.

Use the other end of your brush to add some dots (if you want a poisonous mushrooms..they are pretty) and a little extra shading of a darker brown just on the edges of the lighter shadows.
Not hard, right? You can even add a bit of white to the 'light' side of the mushroom. Get creative and play with colors if you want to. It's fun.
Add some grass. Play a bit!
Note: I used a very tiny brush to add the finer details, a 3/0 white round.
For more coverage of the bigger bits I used a 6 filbert.

Flowers:
Make a petal by making a triangle-ish shape with the small end pointed toward the center.
Make three of them.

Starting from the ground, draw a stem up to the flower, making the fat part (with more paint on the brush) at the bottom.
You can always do the stem first if you want to.

I added a bit of orange and yellow paint toward the center of the flower as well.
Add a bit of black to make a center. And make a few leaves by doing the triangle technique you made the flowers with, but start from the stem and go out.
Don't overload your brush or you will make globs. Do a few practice runs with a scrap piece of paper.

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Copying is one way to learn and that is grand. Learn, have fun, and then make it your own.Go out there and make fantabulous things!Please don't publish or reproduce my workin any way, for any reason without my permission.You can ask me, I'm pretty nice.